


Don't Throw Stones In Glass Lighthouses

by godtrash



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Lighthouse keeper shishido, M/M, Mer AU, mild gore/small animal death, weird fish choutarou
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtrash/pseuds/godtrash
Summary: Day after day, it's the same. And it's lonely. That is, until Shishido meets a beautiful stranger...
Relationships: Ohtori Choutarou/Shishido Ryou
Kudos: 1





	Don't Throw Stones In Glass Lighthouses

Turn on and off the light, don’t talk to nobody. Not that there’s anyone to talk to out here. Occasionally the other guy comes by, but he doesn’t say much, just pushes up his glasses and nods as he inspects the equipment. Shishido would say there should probably be more than one of them out there, in case something were to happen to him. But he doesn’t know what. He’s always been a strong swimmer, loved the sea since he was a young boy. The fact that the jagged rocks give way to tide pools and a deep shelf that falls into nothing doesn’t frighten him any. His uncle used to take him and his brother and cousins diving, and there he saw the splendor of the deep for the first time and it enchanted him.

It’s lazy days up at the top, nights watching the light circle around and catch the distant shadows of the behemoth ocean, rising up like some creature in the night. In the day all is calm with the cacophony of gulls swirling about, and the fish below circling like some mirror image. He doesn’t mind it. He reads a good book, eats his simple meals, and relaxes on the cot. Only a month and a half left and he is free. Back into society, back into home. 

It one day, he’s not sure of the day of the week anymore, when he sees a flash of bright color in the summer light. It is shady today, and it looks like it will rain. Now more than ever the light will be needed to cut through the fog in the deep dark, and so he makes sure everything is well stocked and ready. But the light keeps flickering, and he grows curious, so he climbs down the stairs and onto the shore. He hops lightly over the rocks, slipping here and there but his boots footing catch him in the nick of time. He keeps going until he comes to a flat drop off a rock, and peers out at the water in front of him. Something is bobbing and glistening and floating in the light, and with some deliberate he removes his heavy waders, pulls off his tattered undershirt, and goes in. 

It’s a short ways away, the distance between him and this object bobbing on the surface, and he closes his fist around it and stares. A cross, like the ones Christians carry, silvery and shiny and untarnished by the murky waters it sat in. It is lightweight, almost supernaturally so. He swims back and hauls himself up on the rock, peers a little at the funny trinket for a while and then tucks it away in his pocket. He dries off and changes, and goes back to his reading. Moby Dick, this time. He is enchanted by the tale of the white whale, and gets so lost he never hears the door below open and the footsteps on the stairs.

“Hello.” Says a calm, reedy voice. He jumps about a foot, nearly dropping the book in the process. A man stands before him, impossibly tall and thin, but well built all the same, such as though Shishido would hesitate to get in a fight with him. His hair is curiously without color, pale and grey as the stormy skies above. His clothes are loose and pale as his unblemished skin, and his eyes are huge and brown, the color of tree bark. He extends a long, slender-fingered hand. 

“I lost something here, the other day. I believe you found it?”

His mind goes blank before he remembers the little cross, and he fishes his out from his pocket. “This?” He croaks, wondering how the man knew. The other fellow smiles keenly and warmly, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “That’s it! Thank you for finding it. It a treasured family heirloom, I should have been in a lot of trouble if you hadn’t recovered it for me.”

“No problem.” He says quietly, dropping the necklace into the stranger’s palm. “Were you swimming out there? It’s dangerous, you know.”

The man huffs a small chuckle, the corners of his mouth turned up. Now the smile does reach his eyes, and they are quite nice to look at. “For some, perhaps. But no, I was with my sister and must have dropped while I walked along the shore. The chain isn’t very good you know, it’s quite old and I really must have it replaced.”

“I could fix it.” He clears his throat as the pale young man raises an eyebrow at him. “I mean, I have lots of chains and bolts and files and things here. Kind of a hobby. Gets boring, sometimes.” He shrugs. 

“All right.” The other man says softly, and hands over the cross. Shishido moves back to where he keeps his little wooden box of trinkets, mostly broken and missing pieces he’d found to put back together into new shapes when he had the time. And here, he had nothing but time. 

“I didn’t catch your name.” He says, digging out a likely looking chain , this one a bit thicker but just as silvery.

“Ootori.” ----

“Ootori.” He repeats, smiling. He gets to work at the little side table fastening the new chain on, while he gestures Ootori to sit in the seat opposite. Never made sense to have two chairs, but he’s glad of it now otherwise he’d be stuck sitting on the bed. Not that there was anything strange about that, he told himself viciously. 

Finally, after a few moments, his work is finished and he holds out the newly affixed chain for inspection. Ootori clasps his hands in delight, smiling wide. 

“It’s perfect. Thank you.” 

“Hey, no problem. Like, it was literally nothing. Should hold better now.” 

Ootori gets up to leave, then stops. “Is there something I can do for you? You know, in exchange?”

Shishido’s ears burn a little. “Naw. It was just a little thing. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’d feel bad if I couldn’t repay a debt.” The other man looks thoughtful. “Well, if you ever think of anything, just give me a call.” Shishido nods dumbly, caught in the brightness of that beautiful gaze. It was only after Ootori had gone that it occurred to him he hadn’t left him a phone number of any kind. Just as well, phones didn’t exactly get very good service up here, and the old landline was barely in working condition. The thing had to be older than his grandmother.

He sits back on his bed, no desire to return to the adventures of the sea and the mysterious white whale. He thinks of the pale, curly hair and sharp eyes of the boy who only moments had been in this very room, sitting across from him. Why hadn’t he asked for more than his name? His number, where he lived, how he knew that Shishido was the one who found his cross? Had he seen him, been watching him? The thought gave him pause and made him wonder. He’d said he’d been with his sister, but there was no girl around anywhere that Shishido had seen. Deciding these questions were all too much for the moment, he fell into a fitful nap wherein he dreamed he was floating on a giant cross in the middle of the ocean, and there were several dozen all around, identical to the one he was on, bobbing and dancing in the waves. At once a white whale with his it’s enormous maw opened beneath him and swallowed them all, cross and boy alike into the depths of his stomach. 

He awakens, somewhat sweaty, on top of his bedsheets with the book fallen down from the shelf and landed on his stomach. He puts it back and haphazardly tidies the room. The inspector will come by, top them up with oil and be gone again. He isn’t looking forward to the prospect, the man usually has little to say and is kind of creepy to boot. But this time was to be different.

He shows up late, almost when darkness is setting in, flashlight swinging at his narrow hip. He lets himself in and puts a finger to his lips, hissing Shishido quiet. 

He peers out through a crack in the door, and clicks it shut. 

“You see anything strange today?”

“Just a tourist, why?”

The man grumbles as he set about his duties. “Tourist! No, I mean something truly strange and appalling. Something you couldn’t explain.”

Shishido thinks about the pale-haired boy and the silvery cross he had worn on his neck as he left. “No. Why?”

“There's a strange happening afoot, that’s why.” The tech snaps, shakes his flashlight around for emphasis. “Man-eating sea creatures, is what.”

“Huh?” says Shishido.

“Call them men, but they go back into the ocean at night. I heard tell of them, other jobs, other lighthouses. Never wanted to believe. Not here, surely, in this stuffy little port town. But sure as I’m alive, they’re real and they’re out there.”

The flashlight casts a glow under his bespectacled face that is haunting and makes Shishido shudder. No other reason.

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw…” He shakes his head, as if what he has seen has been too horrific to share. “I saw bird corpses strewn about over the dunes, blood pools here and there. No coyotes in this area, nothing to do something like that. And the marks… Slide marks in the sand where they come up to feed. Gnashing their horrible sharp teeth, they’ll get birds in their nests and eat the eggs. Get humans too, if they could. Why do you think people aren’t allowed on the beach at night?”

“Because it’s not a recreational beach, and it’s dangerous with the rocks and such?” Shishido frowns.

“Well yeah, that’s part of it. But not all of it! Things come around at night, you’ll see, you’ll hear their strange sounds and despair. Better lock up tight tonight. I’m going, before it gets fully dark. Finish the rest yourself.” He sloughs over the oil canister and moves back down the stairs. He stops, points at Shishido.

“You tell any tourists you see the same thing too. They ought to know not to be out at night.”

“Okay, okay, I will.” Shishido says, mostly to humor what is clearly a madman, and proceeds with the rest of the night’s work.

It takes him a while, and finally it is time to curl up again with Moby Dick.

He isn’t sitting on the bed very long when he hears a kind of rapping along the walls. That gives him pause. He pulls his blankets closer. It’s just the wind, he tells himself. He flips another page, lost in his book, until he can ignore what is unmistakably a tapping at the lower door.

Don’t go out at night. There’s bad things out there. He ignores the advice of the lighthouse tech, slides the covers back as he pads downstairs to the main door. It is bolted shut against the wind and storm brewing that night. He opens it just a crack, still having his good sense about him. 

“Hello?”

He calls to the night. For a moment he sees nothing, and then he sees a pale woman stride up, her dress white and long and flowing and immaculate. He feels sweat over his body. He never was good with talking to women, they made him uncommonly nervous. But the pale-eyed woman reminds him of someone as she smiles sweetly at him.

“Hello.” She says, in an ethereal tone. “I wanted to thank you for helping out my little brother. He said you wouldn't accept anything, but I’d hope you’d at least take something for your kindness. You don’t know what that necklace means to him.” 

“Uh.” Shishido said, kind of dumbfounded. “I mean, it was really nothing. You don’t have to…”

“Oh but I do.” She interrupts with her melodic voice, and bids him to hold out his hand. Nervously, he holds his palm up and she drops what looks like a large chunk of jade in his hand.

“If you’re ever in trouble, or in danger of the water, use this.” She says, and winks. He doesn’t really get it, but decides to humor her anywell. 

“Well, thank you. Say, I didn’t get your name.”

“Names are not important. I trust my brother gave you his? Silly boy. Always so reckless with such things. Anyway, I hope that you have a pleasant night, monsieur.” And with that she steps back and curtsies like an honest to goodness princess, and is gone in the night.

Shishido bolts back up the door and sinks against it, holding the jade in his palm. Now what on earth was that about? So the mysterious sister did exist after all. But why was she walking around at night, barefoot at that? He opens the door to ask if she needs help getting home but she is nowhere to be found. Not even footprints were left in the sand where she had been standing. It is all so terribly strange, and Shishido begins to think himself crazy. Sea madness, except he wasn’t even on the sea. He returns to his book upstairs by the warmth of the light and then, thinking better of it, goes to bed.

The next few days pass without incident. No bird corpses, strange nighttime visitors, or errant bits of jewellery distract him from his task at hand. The tech still came by, shaking his head and muttering about monsters but had gotten a lot quieter about it all, like someone had come to tell him to shut up about those things. Shishido was grateful, he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary save his new pale-haired friends, and didn’t think they meant any harm.

It went on like this until one day he went out and nearly steps into a pile of gore. Bird gore, to be exact, ripped and torn one after the other. They were laid out like dark omens on the sand and the concrete, necks snapped and bodies torn but the wings left perfectly intact. He covers his nose at the stench, and uses the landline to call for the main office. They are none too pleased with his report, and tell him in so many rude words to take care of it himself. Getting a shovel from the storage compartment, he begins the unpleasant task of removing the birds away from the lighthouse steps and back to the ocean. The corpses bob up and down, staining the salt water red. When he is finished, sweat gathers on his brow and he still clutches the broom he’d used to scrape the blood and gore away. He takes a step among the rocks, turns back to the lighthouse, when his foot falls in an errant puddle of bird blood and goes out from under him, sending him flying.

He hits the edge of the rock with his side, a nasty cut to be sure, so was grateful in that moment to have tucked his head in so he didn’t smash his skull on the rock. He bounces off the slippery rock, and rebounds into the surf, splashing up on the jagged pieces here and there. It is a little deeper at this point, enough for the tips of his toes to brush sand beneath but barely enough to keep his head above water when he was clutching the now open wound on his side. Blood spills into the water, and all he can think about are sharks, roused by the bodies of the gulls and now his struggling, weak human form.

He clutches the gash as it stings with salt and fetid water, and he kicks carefully towards the shallows. He feels his feet on somewhat dry land again and falls to his knees, blood droplets scattering over the sand. He pants, catching his breath, before thinking of the first aid kit upstairs and how weak his body feels after all that. He’d have to crawl up, and it’d take forever.

“Aw. I thought you were drowning.” Came a familiar voice. He turned to see a head poked up just above the waves, in the too-deep water. The silver haired punk smiles at him wryly, and splashes his way over to the shore, climbing out slowly. Shishido has just enough time to avert his eyes as the boy is naked except the silver cross glittering on his neck.

“Need some help?”

“Yeah.” He breathes, after a moment, Still looking downwards, ears burning red. “My first aid kit’s upstairs… if you could go and fetch it for me…” He is aware of the other boy in his space, wet and warm, and suddenly he is being lifted off his feet.

“That won’t do. You need your stuff, yeah? I’ll take you to it.” 

His face burns as he is bridal carried up the steps of the lighthouse to his room at the top. Ootori set him down on his bed and quickly takes instruction on where to locate the first aid kit. He bustles around like a true mother hen, disinfecting and wrapping the bandages over Shishido’s side with a careful ease. 

When it was done he puzzles over Shishido curiously.

“You should get out of your wet clothes.” Shishido flushes again, and this time the other guy has the decency to blush as well. “So you don’t get sick!” He says quickly.

“Where are your clothes?” Shishido asks wryly.

“Oh. On the shore somewhere, I expect. I was skinny dipping. Didn’t exactly think about it when I saw you floundering around bleeding.”

Shishido scoffs, but winces at the moment he stretches his wound. “Well, thank you. For. Uh, the save, I guess.”

“Thank my sister.” Ootori said dreamily, and before he could ask him what the hell that meant he sat down next to Shishido on the bed. Shishido was very aware now there was a naked guy next to him, and this was a very small, cramped room, and his thoughts were going all sorts of strange places. As if reading his mind, the other boy huffed a soft laugh. 

“You should get some rest.” He inspects the injury one last time. “It's not deep, but if it keeps bleeding you’ll probably need to go to a real doctor.” Shishido nods at the ceiling, bites his tongue.

“Anyway.” He sits up, cross dangling temptingly out in front of Shishido. 

“Thanks.” He croaks again, and with a smile and nod the very nude, very handsome young man departs the staircase.

There is a thundering up the stairs a moment later.

“What was that? Who was that? One of your tourists? I should say, if you’re going to have visitors, you ought to be more discreet. Is he one of them free-spirited types? Winked at me as he went by, you know, Shameless. Listen, I don’t care what you do in your free time up here but try not to give people heart attacks, yes?”

“Yeah, yeah, gotcha.” He would roll away from the busybody tech but his wound prevents him from doing that. He wishes he could have told him to stay. The boy, that was. He could have found him clothes and they could have had tea. Next time, maybe. Something tells him he hasn’t seen the last of the lad.

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter was written for the There and Back Again AU zine. You can find it by looking it up on twitter or tumblr. Check it out if you haven't, it's full of fantastic works by other artists and writers.


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